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October 5, 2006

Pakistan: Mad Mullah's Muslim Jailhouse

News from Dawn and AKI tells the story of a bizarre Muslim cleric's private jail and torture center.

The cleric, Maulana Ilyas Qadri, ran a jail in a village near Haripur, 40 miles north of Islamabad. Police raided the jail, located in the village of Badhana, following a complaint by two people, and found 113 people incarcerated in the cleric's private "jailhouse".

Most of the individuals were kept in chains, and were severely malnourished. The cleric was arrested, as were his six guards, Ghulam Kibriya, Shaukat Rehman, Fakhar Zaman, Farman Khan, Javed and Mazar Ali. Seven of those who were in the jail were British nationals of Pakistani origin. Many of the prisoners were young men and boys.

The raid took place late on Monday night (October 2). The prisoners had been mistreated by the cleric and his guards. The prisoners claimed: "They would beat us with clubs whenever someone tried to escape or object to the treatment meted out to them." The guards also sexually abused them.

The prisoners were taken to Haripur district courts, where eight boys, aged 12 to 18 years, made statements to Civil Judge Hina Khan.

No reason has been given to explain why the individuals were kept prisoner. The cleric and his guards have been tried under aspects of the penal code relating to kidnap and beatings of minors, but also under the "Suppression of Terrorism Act".

As soon as more information is found, I will update this story. It has not been covered by the Pakistan Daily Times.

UPDATE: The Daily Telegraph reveals more about the cleric, (pictured above). He ran his jail as a novel detox clinic for drug addicts. Relatives of those imprisoned offered Maulana Ilyas Qadri sums of money, working out at £50 ($94) a month, in exchange for his "spiritual" cure.

The two men who had informed the police, leading to the raid on Monday night, were two prisoners who had escaped, still shackled together.

The area police chief, Abdul Majeed Afridi, said: "We were not mentally prepared for such a scene when we entered the madrassa. It seemed something out of a drama rather than reality. They were utterly terrified of him and the guards. They were beaten black and blue and claimed it was a jail, not a rehabilitation centre."

The cleric does not admit to any wrongdoing, and maintains that he made the "patients" do their own chaining up, and they signed disclaimers stating that they should not be released until a set time.

Qadri claimed: "Married men would be chained for one year and unmarried men for 18 months. But people from Britain were chained for only three or four months because of pressure from back home. Because of my spiritual treatment they would not feel pain."

The eldest patient was 50 years old. The cleric distributed leaflets in Britain advertising his patented cure, claiming that no-one would revert back to addiction and that the treatment involved no medicines.

The cleric had kept the inmates at the Dar-ul-Aloom Kinzul Islam madrassa, a Deobandi institution. The cleric was so powerful that the police had been ordered to drop a previous investigation.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at October 5, 2006 7:09 PM

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Posted by: Celsius at October 6, 2006 4:16 PM

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